Page 72 of Faeling
Mattias dropped his spoon and leaned back from the table.
“Don’t worry, captain,” Ravenna chirped, “I like you very much.”
Mattias, one of the strongest, bravest orcs Vallek knew, gulped as he gawked at the small woman sitting across from them.
Vallek dropped his face into his palm and sighed.
“The whole camp will be terrified of you by morning,” Vallek grumbled later that night as they lay together in his bed.
His annoyance at this bitter enmity between his mate and his lord commander was beginning to chafe. That didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t want to hold her lithe body close and feel all her delicious curves against him while he scolded her. Hehadbeen away, after all.
“Good,” she said, utterly unrepentant.
Vallek didn’t know whether to be proud, aroused, or annoyed. Perhaps a bit of everything.
Smoothing his hand up and down her leg, he rucked her nightgown higher with each pass. One day soon, he would convince her of the needlessness of the garment. He slept naked and so should she. For efficiency, if nothing else.
“What did you do to him?”
“Nothing fatal.” The minx smiled when she said it.
Vallek sighed, ruffling her dark hair. “I can’t have you poisoning my best men, sprite.”
“I didn’t poison your best men. I poisoned Ulrich.”
“Why do you despise him so?”
“He raided my room, took my mother’s grimoire. Tried to strangle—” Her nostrils flared, and she took a moment to regain her composure. “Besides,” she eventually continued, “he started it. He’s always been against me.”
Well, that was true. Ulrich had wanted to leave her where they found her.“We don’t need a soothsayer. Your future is clear enough,”he remembered Ulrich saying.
“Ulrich has been my most loyal friend since we were boys,” he explained.
“I know. That’s why it wasn’t fatal.” She traced her fingers down the side of his face, her touch featherlight. “He sees what you refuse to—that I threaten, even undermine all that you’ve worked for.”
Vallek tightened his arms around her, not liking that at all. “I liked it better when you disagreed.”
“He doesn’t want you to throw everything away for me. Idon’t want that, either.”
“I’m hardly throwing everything away,” he snorted. “I’madjusting. As anyone would when they’d found their mate.”
“Yes, but not just anyone is a king.”
“Because I’m king I can’t have my way? That hardly seems right.”
“It means sacrifice. You’ve already worked so hard toward unification. You will achieve it, I know you will.” She smiled sadly. “I worry our bond would only thwart you.”
“Never.” Pushing his hand past the hem of her nightgown, he splayed his palm along the warm skin of her lower back. “Perhaps all this time, unification has been for you.”
Her lips parted as the breath rushed out of her. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do,” he said, his mind whirring. “Maybe all this time, I’ve worked to unify my people so that I could take a faeling mate.”
“You don’t have to be king to do that,” she reminded him.
“Perhaps not. But to keep a hellion like you safe, yes.” Nuzzling her hair, he added, “But no more poisoning.”
Smoothing her hands over his chest, she told him, “I do nothing unprovoked. I’m small compared to all of you. I can’t letanyoneget away with threatening me.”
